by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look at some of the early 20th century history of the Old Calvary Cemetery, located at the base of the Elysian Hills of Los Angeles below Dodger Stadium and where Cathedral High School is today, the abandoned burial ground was increasingly subject to desecration and vandalism, though the Los Angeles Express of 20 July 1906 reported that,
Old Calvary Cemetery, Buena Vista street [now North Broadway], soon will be changed into residential property and sold as building lots. Efforts are being made to establish communication with relatives of those who have been buried there and eventually the bodies will be removed to the new cemetery on Boyle Heights [actually, East Los Angeles]. There are twenty acres in the tract.
It was not reported how this proposed development was launched, but it must have been the Catholic Church diocese that initiated the idea, though the project was not carried out. More trouble with intruders persisted, however, as the Express, in its Christmas Eve edition, informed readers that,
Again the ghouls are ravaging old Calvary cemetery, in Buena Vista street. Today a discovery was made that persons had broken into a brick tomb in the northwest corner of the abandoned burying ground and ruthlessly torn out six skeletons which were left strewn upon the ground.
The account continued that none of the coffins or the vault which contained them had identification, so “there is no way of knowing whose were the remains were so desecrated.” The paper added that, since the cemetery’s closure a decade before, “these ghoulish acts have been committed from time to time and the perpetrators have not been caught.” As with earlier accounts, it was assumed that the purpose was “in hope of finding rings or other jewelry,” though the alternative was that “the prowlers seemed to be merely malicious.”
In its brief coverage, the Christmas Day edition of the Los Angeles Herald remarked that “in former days this was the most important cemetery in Los Angeles” as, for some four decades, “it was used as a burying place by wealthy Spanish residents of the city and some of the most prominent of the early settlers are buried there.”
A notable potential proposed project for a canyon behind the cemetery grounds was announced in big, blaring block letters in the headline “STOCKADE FOR PRISONERS” in the 21 November 1907 number of the Los Angeles Record. The City Council’s Building Committee identified “a site for a new stockade for city prisoners,” meaning a jail and this was “to be located in a canon [canyon] on city property in the rear of the old Calvary cemetery” and accessed by Bishop Street, now Road, which today is shortened by the 110 Freeway passing to the west of the high school.
An architect was hired to draw plans for a group of one-story concrete buildings in a square with an open court in the middle, though it was reported there was some opposition from residents in the general area, even as “there are no houses near the proposed site.” As with the housing tract, however, the municipal lockup concept was not consummated and the canyon mentioned may well have been where the community in Chávez Ravine was later established and which forcibly evicted when Dodger Stadium was built a half-century or so later.
In mid-December, the City Council passed an ordinance which decreed that “no further extension of present burial grounds . . . can be tolerated,” but also determined that “interments should not be curtailed in Rosedale and Evergreen cemeteries.” This led the Roman Catholic newspaper, The Tidings, in its issue of the 20th, to editorialize,
Old Calvary Cemetery, situated on Buena Vista street, formerly known Calle de Eternity [Eternity Street], did not have friends among the city fathers in its day of stress and trial [when, however, was not identified], such as Rosedale and Evergreen have nowadays when petitions have been presented to forbid future interments in these cemeteries [ostensibly for purported health reasons]. The action of the present City Council reminds us that Old Calvary did not have the political backing which Rosedale and Evergreen now enjoy. It is known that one of the present City Council is a large stockholder in the Rosedale association. It was but natural to expect that he would use his official position to conserve his own interests.
In its 22 August 1908 number, the Express ran a feature, with a septet of photos that remarked on the “Romance and Memories of the Early Los Angeles” tied to Old Calvary. The piece replicated the inscription on iron tomb of the Pico family for the vault in which were reposed the remains of María Ignacia Alvarado de Pico, wife of Pío Pico, the last governor of Mexican California, who, along with his brother, Andrés, occupied the other two crypts.
It was added that the trio of Picos did not rest in peace because “on several occasions the tomb has been desecrated,” reportedly because “the old governor was immensely wealthy” and it was “reported after his death [in September 1894] that valuable jewelry was buried with him and his wife.” The paper hastened to note that “this was not true,” as he was fleeced from his Ranchito near Whittier and died in straitened financial circumstances, “but the report was enough to cause grave robbers to attempt to steal the treasure.”
The piece continued that,
Before long another place will have to be found for the three bodies. In a few more years the march of progress will have obliterated the old cemetery and in time that which is now and for many years has been consecrated ground will provide sites for homes, or possibly for factories.
The remains of Don Andrés, a prominent general of Mexican California armed forces as well as a member of the California Assembly who died in 1876, were reinterred at the new Calvary Cemetery, while those of Don Pío and Doña Ignacia were, in 1921, relocated to the newly completed Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum at El Campo Santo Cemetery at the Homestead.
The piece went on to observe that, when old Calvary was condemned by the city, it “granted the church twenty-five years to move the bodies,” which happens to be 1921. It was added that “the moving of the bodies” from one to the other “is still going” as “one by one the old caskets are being disinterred and moved to other places” and “dozens of open graves and broken headstones” showed this.
Moreover, there was the note that “many of the old vaults are crumbling from decay and their iron doors stand open” upon abandonment, while “monuments which cost thousands of dollars are going to ruin.” The elements were not the only cause, however, as vandalism was cited: “Marble and granite slabs have been broken and headstones have been overturned.”
As to what would become of the property, Anthony Joyce, the diocesan cemetery association secretary, told the paper,
I do not believe there is anyone in the world who can tell what the diocese will do with the ground. The people who have bodies of their relatives or friends there still have about thirteen years to move them. If they do not make some disposition of them at the end of that time I suppose the church will attend to it, or if the church does not the city authorities probably would. But until the bodies have been removed of course the church can do nothing.
The Express observed that “it is still known to the old timers, especially among the Spanish inhabitants, as the ‘new cemetery,'” as the original Campo Santo, adjacent on the south to the Plaza Church (Our Lady Queen of Angels Church), “has completely vanished.” This was not strictly true as, when construction was being carried out for the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, remains from that first burying ground were found and controversy ensued.
The story of the imposing Briswalter Chapel was related, most of this covered earlier in this post and in the prior one covering the period from 1856-1896, but there was an interesting sidelight concerning how the estate of Andre Briswalter as challenged by a niece, who was left only five dollars in the will. She hired Stephen M. White as her attorney and the future United States senator, credited with leading the “Free Harbor Fight” that secured federal funding for today’s Port of Los Angeles, won the case and was said to be have received the princely sum of $100,000 “the largest that had been earned by an attorney up to that time” in the Angel City.
Another legal battle concerned an Old Calvary resident, Miguel Leonis of the Rancho Encino in the San Fernando Valley, with the native of the French Basque region leaving a half-million estate. His indigenous common-law wife, Espiritu, battled with Leonis’ brothers, who were in France, and a three-way split was the result, though a Latina with a daughter claimed to be his, tried to make a claim, albeit unsuccessfully, while Espiritu asserted that her share was stolen “by those who helped her fight the case.”
A prominent Anglo mentioned was “Navel” Stearns, though that was “Abel,” who was discussed in the prior Calvary post, while his widow, Arcadia Bandini Baker was denoted as “one of the last representatives of the old aristocracy of Los Angeles.” Someone not alluded to in previous articles of the denizens of the cemetery was Cristobal Aguilar, a former mayor and zanjero (superintendent of the existing open water ditch system) who was the last Latino chief executive until Antonio Villaraigosa was elected in 2005 and who was said to be “a distinguished and scholarly old man and one of the last of his line.”
A little-known figure featured in the article was José María Fuentes (1817-1876), who was said to have come to the Angel City as a Mexican Army officer representing the country when the American invasion of California and “fell in love with the country . . . and established a home here.” Fuentes was a carpenter, store owner and farmer who was also a three-term president of the Junta Patriotica de Juárez, a civic and patriotic society of Mexicans in the Angel City.
The piece called him “one of the last of the true Mexican patriots” who would not relinquish citizenship of his homeland, even when asked to seek office, “during his life . . . was always the leading spirit” of the annual Mexican Independence Day celebrations on 16 September. It was added that “each year he would donate $2,000 or $3,000,” large sums for the time, “for fireworks, refreshments and music, and because of his efforts Sept. 16 was often more enthusiastically celebrated than July Fourth.”
Francisco P. “Pancho” Johnson, the son of an English migrant to Mexican California and María Carmen Guirado and whose two sisters married the brothers Henry and Francis Mellus with one later wedding Workman and Temple friend, David W. Alexander, was “once a noted character in Los Angeles, but now all but forgotten.” He was known by some as “The Jester of Governor Pico’s Court,” while serving as Don Pío’s secretary, with long-time residents recalling him asking his boss for $1,000 to pay a gambling debt and performing a comic song-and-dance that left Pico howling with laughter and handing over the money.
Johnson, it was recorded, was “the most dashing reckless sport[ing figure] in the country” around Los Angeles as “he raced horses and fought gamecocks and played monte [a card game] with a recklessness that excited the wonder of all who knew him.” He, however, was involved in a swindle in which the aged Pico signed a document he believed was a loan but which the recipient, Bernard Cohn, insisted was a deed, with Johnson translating for the ex-governor, who did not speak or write English, and being paid $250 by Cohn. The affair ruined Pico, while Johnson was also rendered poor by losing houses in the floods of 1883-1884 and was buried by a friend, rather than relatives, though it was not mentioned that Johnson died in July 1886.
Rose L. Ellerbee, writing in the 23 May 1909 issue of the Los Angeles Times in a feature headlined “RACKET ‘ROUND BURIAL PLACE” with a subheading of “NEGLECTED TOMBS YAWN IN OLD CATHOLIC CEMETERY,” began by lamenting,
We talk much about preserving our landmarks in this day, yet the most historic spot within the city of Los Angeles, after the Church of our Lady of the Angels [Plaza Church]—the old Roman Catholic burying ground on Buena Vista street—is now in a state of neglect and desolation that is a shame and a disgrace to the city.
Ellerbee added that “the ground for this ‘campo santo’ was set aside by El Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1839 and was accepted and consecrated by the church in 1844,” though she commented that “the first burials were made as early as 1834.” Among the surnames she recorded as being interred at the cemetery were Apablasa, Bandini, Bernard, Chapman, Dominguez, Lanfranco, Sepúlveda, Stearns, Williams, Wilson, Vignolo, Yorba and Temple, though who was from the latter family was not specified.
The writer remarked that “the city has surrounded the old graveyard” amid the clamor of oil wells, iron works, trains and trolleys, while “for long practically no effort has been made to care for this once beautiful spot.” There was, however, a brush removal conducted about a year-and-a-half prior. Still, Ellerbee observed that,
Costly monuments are broken and discolored; the old tombs have preyed upon by vandals; the stately pepper and evergreen trees grow riotously untrimmed; luxuriant shrubbery and fragrant flowers are long since dead. Many bodies have been removed and on every hand are broken and yawning tombs and vaults; many of them entirely unprotected. Certainly it is only a merciful providence that has thus far prevented fatal accidents, or foul murders, in this neglected graveyard.
Other resting places of prominent Angel City personages were recounted, including that of Bernardo Yorba, who died in 1858 and was “a true and noble son of California, descended from Spain’s best blood” and of Antonio Franco Coronel, whose grave “should be a sacred trust to the city of Los Angeles, because of the Coronel collection [of historical material now at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County], if for no other reason.”
The Briswalter Chapel also was noted as “a windowless, floorless ruin, with broken tomb and tablets—a thing of reproach” as well as “in strong contrast” to a grave “with a wooden headboard, bearing [the] date of 1886 and the words ‘four years of age,'” but which “was yesterday covered with fresh roses—the only bit of color in all that wilderness of weeds and destruction.” Ellerbee held out hope that “prompt action might still save enough to make this a beautiful and sacred memorial to the past,” while she mused, as Los Angeles was growing by leaps and bounds in an increasingly industrialized and urbanized age,
And where is a peaceful, restful God’s acre more needed than just here, amid the strife and din of commercialism? With all of its sordid surroundings and the ugly disorder and desecration of the place, the fine old trees still shelter and screen the graves, and a sense of peace still rests upon the beautiful, uprising stretch of ground which culminates in a hill, bearing many unmarked graves of priests and nuns and a tall wooden cross. Certainly it would seem that steps should be taken immediately by some organization, or by the city, before this historical graveyard is past all hope of preservation, to save one of the most interesting and valuable landmarks which Southern California possesses.
To conclude, the author added that “another landmark well worth saving to the city is the old adobe house on the corner of Olvera and Marchessault streets, north of the Plaza” and which was “the last of the once famous adobe dwellings that surrounded the Plaza.”
This structure, then containing a Mexican restaurant, blacksmith shop and hay market “has been known for years as the Olvera house; but is said to have been built by Don Tiburcio Tapia [grantee of Rancho Cucamonga], the first native merchant of the city, prior to his death in 1845, making it one of the oldest structures standing in the city.” Ellerbee concluded that saving the edifice would make it “an object lesson of the true adobe house of the pueblo days and a most interesting and attractive addition to our historical relics—for our own people and for visitors.”
When the bones of Pío and Ignacia Pico were relocated a dozen years later to El Campo Santo at the Homestead, Ellerbee wrote a feature for the Times about the reinterment. We can assume she did this with no small amount of satisfaction on that score, if not also regret that more was not done to preserve Old Calvary. Speaking of which, we’ll return on Friday with more of the early 20th century history of the graveyard, so check back then!